Letter from John Witherow, editor

20 October 2011

Dear Colleagues

As you are all too well aware, we are going through tough times both in the newspaper business and the wider economy. This, together with the digital revolution, is driving down print sales, forcing up the cost of newsprint and savaging our classified advertising. The end result is a cost base too high for the revenues we are generating. All the commercial divisions of News International have recently announced savings to their budgets, and we too are going to have to reduce the cost of producing the Sunday Times.

So beginning today, we are announcing a number of proposed changes that will affect all of us on the newspaper and its digital platforms. We have started a 90-day consultation process with NISA as the proposals affect a number of staff and casuals. We will also be making savings from our retainers, lineage, expenses and our pictures budget. But as we spend most money on salaries, we believe we have to reduce the number of people that work for the Sunday Times. To give you some context, we are looking for savings of approximately 12% on our annual budget. Our proposals mean that there will be some compulsory staff redundancies and about 20 staff will be notified that they are at risk of redundancy. Casuals could see a reduction of about 30%.

We are not cutting the number of sections, so we want to make these changes with minimal impact to our quality. As a result we have looked at ways of producing the paper more efficiently. This will involve the creation of five key departments that will enable us to manage our pages in a more structured way through the week. That is crucial for making an impact on the number of casual shifts. The reorganised design and graphics team will be run by Gordon Beckett, pictures by Ray Wells, live subbing by Ian Houghton, features subbing by Denise Boutall and the production team will be overseen by Simon Pumphrey and Tristan Davies. It will mean imposing tougher deadlines on each section and sticking to them.

Each of these desks will provide a structure to support the different requirements for all the sections across the paper, website and iPad. The digital teams, which until now have been working separately, will be integrated and will work closely with print colleagues as we continue to build our digital ambitions for the Sunday Times.

You will shortly receive an email from Anoushka Healy, the managing editor, which will outline more details about the process and the next steps during this 90-day consultation period.

I want to thank all of you who work tirelessly for the paper week after week. We are rightly proud of our excellent paper, our app and our website, and I want any change to have minimal impact on their quality and professionalism. I'm not pretending this restructuring will be easy, but I believe that if we approach it in a positive way we can find new ways of producing the paper and digital content more efficiently. That is crucial if we are to secure our future in what is becoming a very uncertain world.

Letter from Anoushka Healy, managing editor

20 October 2011

Dear colleagues

As the editor outlined in his presentation this afternoon we begin our 90-day consultation period today. We have already sat down with NISA and taken them through our proposed plans. These discussions will continue through the 90-day period and we aim to individually meet with those staff at risk of compulsory redundancy within the next week. Immediately after this we will meet with those casuals who we believe are affected by these proposals. We fully understand that the uncertainty may be difficult to deal with but it will take time if we are to conduct this process properly. The consultation process for casuals has also begun and will last for 90 days.

We have already met with Nuala Harvey and Nick Rufford, the Sunday Times NISA reps so please do contact them if you have any questions. You can also contact Tristan Davies, executive editor and the team in the managing editor's office, as well as HR (Joyce Idoniboye or Sarbjit Sahota).

I am very sorry to give you this difficult news and I know that there will be a lot of uncertainty. We will do all we can to talk to those affected as quickly as possible and to keep you updated throughout the consultation period.